URL for Research Done for Last Post

http://www.awrsd.org/oak/Library/greek_and_latin_root_words.htm

Lucentio's Role

Of all of Bianca's suitors, Lucentio is the most intelligent. His name even hints at this. "Luc" is a Greek and a Latin root word meaning "light" (Mr. Hanno's Greek and Latin Prefixes/ Suffixes/ Root Words Table- URL below). Light as part of the meaning of Lucentio's name can be taken in the context of the play to mean knowledge or intelligence. As soon as Lucentio sees Bianca and expresses a desire to marry her, Tranio suggests that he come up with a plan to wed her. His plan is much more effective than either Gremio's or Hortensio's. Gremio simply wants to "purchase" Bianca's hand in marriage from her father. Though this was probably the traditional way to marry in the play's society, it more than likely would lead to an unhappy and unstable marriage between Bianca and Gremio; Bianca's love for the Gremio, and even Gremio's love for the Bianca, would not be guaranteed. Hortensio courts Bianca using the exact methods that Gremio does not use; he interacts with her as her tutor with the intent of gaining her love. The flaw with this plan, of course, is that it does not take into account the lawful necessity of "purchasing" Bianca's hand in marriage; Baptista would not let a man who has not offered any wealth or material possessions marry his daughter. Lucentio's plan is the use of both Gremio's and Hortensio's methods. He has Tranio pose as himself (Lucentio) in order to "purchase" Bianca's hand, and he himself poses as one of Bianca's tutors in order to gain her love so that he can be sure his marriage to her will be consensual, and, thus, happy. As the play progresses, Lucentio comes closer to gaining Bianca's hand in marriage than do either Gremio or Hortensio. In fact, Lucentio/ Tranio-Lucentio (they work toward the same goal) both outbid Gremio for Bianca's hand and seem to win Bianca's love instead of Hortensio. As a result, Lucentio does not need to use both methods in order to actually marry Bianca. Up until Act 5, Lucentio seems clearly above the other suitors in winning Bianca's hand.

Lucentio is a flat character, but he is a foil to three other characters. Because he competes with Gremio and Hortensio for the same woman's (Bianca's) hand in marriage, he is a rival and a peer to both of them. As a result, he is a foil to both of them. He is also a foil to Petruchio, as he seems to be the closest to gaining Bianca's love while Petruchio seems to gain Katherine's love. Lucentio's actions in compound with Hortensio's and Gremio's move the subplot of the play, the quest for Bianca's love, forward.

As readers of Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew, we are only reading the actors' script. We are obviously given much less information than we would be if we were an audience to a performance of the play. In fact, we are even given less information than we would be if we were reading the play's story as a novel. Not only can we not see or hear any physical scenes of the play, but we do not have a narrator to constantly describe them for us. As a result, other than the short parenthetical descriptions of characters entering and exiting the scenes or performing actions crucial to the understanding of the dialogue (ex.: "(Biondello comes forward with the gifts)" Act 2, Scene 1, Between Lines 105 and 106), we have no descriptions of the setting of the play except for the hints the dialogue gives us.

In Scene 1 of Act 2, the time of day is revealed twice through the dialogue. The scene is very long, and readers may come to think that it is taking place throughout the course of a day. It becomes clear, however, that this is not the case. At the beginning, when Gremio, the two men disguised as tutors, Petruchio, Tranio, and Biondello enter, Gremio greets Baptista by saying, "Good morrow, neighbor Baptista" (42). This reveals that the time of day is morning. Later, Petruchio greets Kate as she appears by saying "Good morrow, Kate, for that's your name, I hear" (190). This tells the reader that the time of day is still morning. The remainder of the scene consists of Petruchio's and Kate's witty argument and, immediately following that, Gremio's and Tranio's bidding for Bianca. The physical setting of part of the scene is possibly revealed when Baptista says, "We will go walk a little in the orchard" (118). The reader is still not sure that any of the scene truly takes place in the orchard. After Baptista says this, Petruchio immediately begins to inquire about Kate. Not much later, Hortensio, disguised as Litio, arrives and tells Baptista that Katherine refuses to be patient with his teachings. If Petruchio and Baptista had been talking in the orchard, it would not have been easy for Hortensio to find them. It is possible that Petruchio and Katherine have their argument in the orchard; after Baptista says he will lead Hortensio to his lesson with Bianca, he asks Petruchio, "Signior Petruchio, will you go with us,/ Or shall I send my daughter Kate to you?" (174-175). Petruchio replies, "I pray you do. I'll attend her here" (176). Baptista proceeds to send Katherine to Petruchio, who is presumably still in the orchard. The dialogue hints at a character's mood and physical appearance at one point in the scene. When Hortensio, disguised as Litio, approaches Baptista to tell him of Katherine's impatience in her lesson, Baptista asks, "How now, my friend, why dost thou look so pale?" (149) Hortensio replies, "For fear, I promise you, if I look pale" (150). This reveals that Hortensio is pale out of fear. The parenthetical declaration of Hortensio's entrance into the scene says that his head is "Broke" (Between lines 148 and 149). As a result, when he says, "And with that word she hath struck me on the head" (161), the reader knows that his head is injured because it was hit with the lute. Also, Hortensio's description of what happened during the lesson puts the picture in the reader's mind that he is very frustrated. He says, "I think she'll (Katherine will) sooner prove a soldier!/ Iron may hold with her, but never lutes" (152-153). This shows the reader his desperation and possibly his astonishment.

The Paralysis and Following Epiphany in "Araby"

The events at the end of Araby somewhat foreshadow the Joycean epiphany that comes at the very end. First, the narrator's uncle arrives very late at home the night the narrator is supposed to go to Araby. His uncle does not even remember to give the narrator money for Araby upon his arrival. Later, after the narrator has taken the train to the bazaar, he sees that it will only be open for ten more minutes. He has trouble finding a sixpence entrance, so he settles for an entrance that costs twice as much out of fear that the bazaar would close before he could enter. He has rushed to accomplish the task of purchasing something for Mangan's sister up to this point; however, once he is inside the bazaar, all of his actions show paralysis,

I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly... (34)
Remembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to one of the stalls and
examined porcelain vases and tea-sets... (35)
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in
her wares seem more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle
of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket.
(35)

He shows no need of urgency to accomplish his goal once he has entered the bazaar. He seems to approach the stall with little or no idea of what his next action will be. As he looks at the vases and tea-sets in the stall, he does not contemplate what he will purchase. This becomes clear when he tells the woman who runs the stall that he has no desire to purchase anything. He already begins to feel a sense of hopelessness as he remains in the stall pretending to have a purpose there. When the lights of the bazaar turn off, he fully experiences the epiphany that his coming to Araby was useless because he could not bring himself to purchase anything. With this epiphany comes feelings of "anger and anguish." However, all of his hesitance from the point he entered Araby to the moment the lights turned out gradually foreshadows his ultimate epiphany and makes it more unavoidable. Like other Joycean epiphanies, this epiphany is followed by the narrator's return to the mundane parts of his life that are school and inability to interact with Mangan's sister.

Audience's Lack of Pity for Gregor Despite his Being Alienated

Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," like may other modernist works, has a major theme of alienation. Gregor is the subject of alienation from everyone else in his life. However, Kafka does not want his readers to feel pity for Gregor. Before he becomes a bug, he lives at a distance from the people with whom he works. Because he is a traveling salesman, he rarely sees those people who work in the offices at his firm. He cannot keep relationships with those whom he meets on his travels, as he only interacts with them for short periods of time for business purposes. He also lives at a distance from his family; he locks the door every night before retiring to his room. The tension between him and his father is evident in the beginning of the story as his father shows little patience for Gregor's failure to present himself to the chief clerk. Once Gregor has become a bug, the alienation he experiences is magnified and, thus, made more obvious to the reader. His mother expresses concern for him in the face of the chief clerk, saying that he is ill in hopes that she can help excuse his tardiness. However, once she knows that he is a bug, she refuses to address him even once. His father aggressively forces him back into his room after he has caused the flight of the chief clerk.

Despite all of this alienation, Kafka does not want the reader to sympathize with Gregor. Throughout the story, from when Gregor apparently spontaneously has become a bug to when he dies, Kafka's narration remains objective. He never adopts enough of Gregor's persona in his narration to show any of Gregor's long-term thoughts about his being a bug. Even when he is narrating from Gregor's point of view, Kafka still only shows Gregor's thoughts and plans of how he can make the best out of his being a bug. This entails how he can get out of bed, get dressed, and make the eight o'clock train in time all as a bug at the beginning of the story, and how he can get food and attention toward the end of the story. Kafka never reveals Gregor's thoughts, if Gregor does have any, about how his lifestyle will entirely dramatically change now that he is a bug. Especially at the beginning of the story, when Gregor has discovered his metamorphosis, the reader would expect detailed description of Gregor's thoughts on how he possibly came to be a bug. However, Kafka provides little of such description. This subjective narration (ignoring Gregor's deep thoughts and only focusing on his thoughts that cause his actions and his actions themselves) generally does not create a strong feeling of pity for Gregor in the reader. If Kafka had wanted to give the reader a stronger feeling of pity, he could have added in his narration more of Gregor's thoughts of general desperation about his being a bug. Also, the fact that Gregor transformed into and lived miserably as a bug rather than any other animal shows Kafka's lack of intention to create a feeling of pity,

One side of his body rose up, he was tilted at an angle in the doorway, his flank was quite
bruised, horrid blotches stained the white door, soon he was struck fast and, left to himself,
could not have moved at all, his legs on one side fluttered trembling in the air, those on the
other were crushed painfully to the floor-... (104-105)

Bugs are generally among the most disgusting animals in humans' eyes, and they are certainly some of the most despised. Descriptions of Gregor's pain as a bug will more likely evoke feelings of disgust in the reader rather than feelings of pity. This is because Gregor's "blotchy" blood is described to stain the wall and his many legs are described to be "trembling in the air." It is hard for a reader to feel pity for a creature that disgusts them; if Kafka had wanted the reader to be more likely to pity Gregor, he would have had Gregor transform into and suffer as a more likable animal, such as a rabbit or a dog. It is possible that Kafka wants his audience to alienate Gregor just as those in Gregor's life alienate him.

Kafka Citations- The Nature of the metamorphoses in "The Metamorphosis"

In Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", the protagonist's great transformation, often the pivotal moment in a work of fiction, gets plopped unceremoniously on our lap in the story's first sentence. In other words, it begins with what should be its climax. "The Metamorphosis" opens with the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, discovering that he has turned into a giant cockroach. Surprisingly, Gregor’s bizarre new state is not the central transformation in the novel. Gregor’s love and devotion towards his family remain unchanged throughout the story, the only constant left in his rapidly deteriorating life. As his physical needs and abilities shift from human to animal, it is his family who forces him to adapt to his new identity: they remove the furniture from his room, begin feeding him leftovers, and gradually help strip away everything that had identified him as a human being. It is no surprise, then, that they’re able to exclude Gregor from their lives, and ultimately cause his death. By the end of the story, Gregor’s parents and sister have themselves metamorphosed.

Gregor's metamorphosis calls into question all the assumptions of our daily lives: that success and appearance and social position matter; that a productive life was characterized by a steadily improving standard of living and a socially acceptable appearance. These considerations produce even further questions: if we once appeared socially acceptable and now have ceased to do so, are we still in fact ourselves? Was the socially acceptable persona in fact ourselves, or is there more essential selfness in the being we have now become? Or have we, in fact, been nobody in the first place, and are we nobody still? "The Metamorphosis" is a story about alienation. Gregor's life is dictated by his dead-end job and family responsibilities to the extent that even when he travels to different towns, he prefers to stay in his hotel room studying train timetables rather than experience what the new location has to offer. When Gregor wakes up as an insect, his essential identity has not changed. Curiously, his condition does not arouse a sense of surprise or incredulity in the eyes of his family, who merely despise it as an indication of impending burden. Gregor's earlier sentiment is reciprocated when his family begins locking and bolting the door shut behind him in his room.

The Dual Identities of Evil in "Young Goodman Brown"

In"Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, evil is a large theme. However, the true identity of evil is questioned through a reversal of evil's identity during the story. At first, when Young Goodman Brown is going through the forest, evil is presented as anything that is non-Christian in that it goes against Christian teachings. Young Goodman Brown explains to his guide that he comes from a family with repeated generations of good moral Christian men and fathers. By the time Young Goodman Brown is running through the forest toward the demonic congregation, that he is not evil is seriously being questioned by the reader. He carelessly runs through the forest screaming taunts at the evil sounds around him. While that in itself is not evil, Hawthorne describes him at the time as (the following are not exact quotes, but are citings of the wording used in the story at different places) "the most frightful figure throughout the haunted forest." He also calls Young Goodman Brown a "demoniac" and says that his actions are a result of "the fiend raging in the breast of a man." At the end of the story, he is not described as evil (like he was when he was running through the forest), but as "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful" man. He does not have any friendly interactions with people and he always seems to be suspicious that the evil of the devil is present among the townspeople. Overall, he has changed from a normal, friendly moral Christian to a Christian who is extreme in his beliefs about the presence of evil among everyday townspeople (he became a "demoniac" in between). He is a Christian throughout the story, but his Christian morality demonstrated through his kindness fades away at the end. Through this, Hawthorne is likely trying to say that Christianity can cause immorality in a person as well as morality. This trend is also seen in the contrasting views Hawthorne has of the townspeople. They are revealed to be sinful at the evil congregation in the forest, but Hawthorne describes many of them, especially Goody Cloyse, as good Christians throughout the story. (Hawthorne uses verbal and situational irony when he continues to describe the townspeople as good Christians even when they are seen as members of the evil congregation).